Please review my recent launched site Crosstips.org | Hacker News Reader

Please review my recent launched site Crosstips.org

crosstips.org

33 pointspeterbe50 comments

Is it obvious what it does? Does it work? Does it help?

Was it really necessary to rip off Readernaut's HTML and CSS wholesale?

I mean, Jesus, it's a simple web app. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours to come up with your own design and code.

Yes it was necessary. I don't know how to do design and CSS and there's no money made or invested into it. I tried putting together a design but it looked shit and never worked very well.

Convenient to you and necessary are not synonyms. There is an Internet full of free (beer and/or speech, your call), legal, pretty designs that you can use to your heart's content.

I recommend anything by Styleshout (great web 2.0y designs), MultiFlex (more traditional, a little boring by default but clean and fits just about anything), and several of the designs on oswd.org for projects which don't have the budget for a custom design. I actually ran a profitable business off of an OSWD template for almost two years:

http://www.oswd.org/design/preview/id/2583

Strip out the giant sunflower, add in a header, and bam, its a B2C software sales site.

You could have at least used a free template...

http://www.oswd.org/

I like the idea, but I would make it a bit more clear what the site actually does.

I'd also recommend making the boxes quite a bit larger since there's so much white space. Done right, overly-large boxes work - like at tumblr ( http://www.tumblr.com/register )

Ok. I'll certainly consider that.

You really need to explain what this is for.

Agreed. I took a look for about 30 seconds, then came here to say the same thing.

EVERY site should have a single sentence (at the least) with a concise, non-jargony explanation of what it is. You can't just assume.

When I saw someone mention the Favicon I went back and got it :) I think the problem I really had was that I read your "example" but it made no sense since I couldn't see any of the character boxes until I typed in the number of characters.

I've added a tagline now. I didn't have one before because before I launched it on a domain name I had a much more obvious name for the site which would need a tagline much less.

No you don't. It's quite obvious.

Judging by the number of comments saying that it needs to be more explicit, it's quite obviously not obvious to everyone.

I've clearly learned something by all your feedback. It used to have a more obvious name before that I couldn't use because of domain name real estate. I had to change to Crosstips but didn't pad it with more explanation of what it does. Plus having stared at it so much myself I got "home blind".

But most of the complaints say it needs to be more explicit because they didn't realize it was a crosswords tool, which inherently means they DID realize it was a crosswords tool.

It would be even more obvious if you put the favicon next to the "Crosstips" header.

It was definitely NOT obvious for me...

Damn it! That's what I hoped I wouldn't have to. Especially the example under the form.

Even a simple sentence at the top explaining who the site is for and what it does would be a HUGE improvement.

"Crosstips helps you finish that crossword you're stuck on."

"Need help with your crossword?"

"Can't solve a tough crossword? We're here to help..."

These aren't very good, but at least I know what the site is for now...having a description will also help with SEO.

Not just crosswords... scrabble!

I don't think it would be all that useful for scrabble. For that you would have to be able to input random letters and get words out. I didn't, however, have any difficulty figuring out what the site was for (the name and the icon made it fairly clear I thought). The "crossword puzzle" metaphor could have been incorporated a bit more in the design, maybe.

Well, Google does not explain what their search is for; why should you have to? Considering it is a niche market for folks that want to solve crossword puzzles, and you had enough people talk about it with each other, you could keep the front page non-descriptive. It is a destination site that people will visit when they know about what it does.

I wouldn't want to see a slogan every time I visited the site, anyways.

Change the tip word daily to mix it up a bit.

I've made some improvements now thanks to Nicholas Woodham. There is now a tag line and the first time you visit it it writes the tag line in full.

It became obvious to me after glancing at the favico. It's one of those tiny details that ends up being important.

I think you'd be far better off to swap the "About" page text for the statistics on the front page. I doubt the average visitor to your site cares how many searches have been run in the last 30 days (especially since they all seem to be zero), but judging by the comments on this page, the average new visitor probably would like to see something explaining what this is.

Some suggestions:

- add options for UK/US English

- add an option so that you can solve anagrams and find scrabble words

I automatically assumes British English if you're located (by GEO IP) in the United Kingdom and likewise for American English. For people in France for example they can chose between "English (GB)" and "English (US)".

Yikes, I had absolutely no idea what this was for. I thought it was some type of word generator. After finding the very tiny link at the bottom, I saw the magic word: crosswords.

Most people don't do crosswords. Add that word to your page, or a lot of people will be completely lost.

Add some javascript to skip next input box automatically when entering text.

"length" is a strange way to begin the conversation with your audience. i get it, length is critical to finding the right word, but that doesn't make sense until you understand what it does. i would think about this from a user experience perspective and see if maybe there's a better way to get this information from your User.

Good point. Perhaps "Number of letters:" is better. Yeah, it does sound better.

It would help if you provided definitions for the returned words to aid matching an answer to the clue. Nice idea though.

That could definitely go into a version 2. I thought about it but decided I'll just this one released first.

I get a "502 Bad Gateway" when trying to access the provided link.

I crashed! I'll need to review the setup and support that with proper stress tests that tests the actual search as well as the static media.

How about a "Crosstips helps you figure out the answers to crossword puzzles, provide in a letter length and a few letters to get started."

For all HTTP optimization junkies, check out the headers on all the static stuff. Pretty good caching, eh?

Why would I use this? Isn't the fun of a crossword struggling through stuff like this without help?

Excellent question. I made the site for the same reason a crossword solver solves a crossword: to see if I can pull it off.

I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but if you did it just as an exercise to see if you could, why are you soliciting feedback?

Because I'm a web developer. Not a crossword mathematician.

probably to have you affirm that he actually pulled it off.

What is this for and why do you break my browser back button?

on your suggestions, feedback, tips at the bottom, you might want to add some captcha or your gonna get spammed :P

Get rid of the About page. Move that content to the left column of the front page.

That would add noise I think. Plus don't people expect an About link/page? Kinda similar to how people expect to find a link to the home page near the upper left corner.

@peterbe if you add http:// to your blog link in your profile, it becomes clickable.

I think this is broken-- it's been a while since I saw clickable links in profiles.

Thanks for the tip!

groovy feedback form, more sites should have something that easy.

I don't get it.

As of 1355 Sunday it's popping up 502 error.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com